See the axis · Relation to technology

Objection

Proving too much

If no technology is neutral, the charge applies to the book as well, and no longer distinguishes anything.

Objects to

  1. You say no tool is neutral, that every device shapes us. Granted. But then the book shapes us too, and writing, and the cathedral, and conversation governed by politeness: all of it steers attention and transforms our lives.
  2. If « not neutral » is said of everything, the word no longer separates the feed that captures you from the library that elevates you. A critique that condemns all technology gives no means of choosing among them.
  3. To tell the good device from the bad, one must after all return to what it does to us, to the end it serves, hence to its use and its effects. What mistrust wished to avoid, the examination of uses, it is now forced to return to.

Therefore So the critique holds only if it becomes discerning: not « all technology alienates us », but « this one, for this reason, does us a disservice ».

Possible resolutions of the objection

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